


Brushstrokes

by Dapperscript



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 18:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7725907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dapperscript/pseuds/Dapperscript
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal creates his masterpiece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brushstrokes

There is a beauty in anguish.

 

It’s a masterpiece. A shroud of honesty that descends upon the body like a sunlit fine mist in the early morning. Every person is different. Some wear the shroud like a heavy cloak, buckling under the weight, revealing an ugliness under it all. But some, very few, find the shroud and wrap it lightly around themselves, _becoming_ under the weight of agony.  

 

Will Graham is becoming. He is breathtaking. He is both mortal and deity, clutching haplessly at the edge of himself, struggling to turn away from the transcendence wrapping him in its wings. He fights like an animal, his words his claws, his introversion his teeth. It’s a delicate dance that cannot be overstated, a transformation taking shape in subtlety. Few can see the tendrils of change wrap around his throat, threading itself like ivy creeping up his legs, over his hands, into his eyes, curling snug and consuming him from within.

 

Hannibal can see. It’s slow, creeping, breath by breath, so slow and so subtle that no one else notices. But he sees every perfect second and catalogues it all, a prophet for the word of God.

 

Will Graham breaks so beautifully. He’s a feast for the senses, his anguish and his fear finer wines than Hannibal will ever partake of. Every twitch of his expression is a masterpiece. Every crinkle of his brow, the tightness of his eyes, the wrinkle of his nose, and the crack of his lips tells a story. He’s a painting in process, an unfinished masterpiece, and Hannibal holds the brush.

 

He slashes violent lines to make up Will’s face, his sacrifices in his brushwork.

 

He impales Cassie Boyle to make up Will’s jaw, tight and trembling and clenched in agony.

 

He impales Marissa Schurr to make up Will’s eyes, deep and expressive and haunted in blood.

 

He kills and he watches as his painting comes to life, as his deity is realized. Hands and neck, arms and nose, ears and hair, everything mixed with blood and agony. Will becomes, and with every brushstroke, Hannibal realizes he is losing. A slave to his masterpiece. He cages Will behind steel and stone when the realization hits, but he could no more contain Will Graham than he could breathe electricity. He’s life and death, benediction and wrath, and Hannibal is consumed.

 

He is so consumed that Will’s betrayal is almost poetic, Hannibal’s perfect life thrown cold with the realization. His masterpiece has started to paint itself, but he has one final detail to add.

 

He slashes Abigail Hobbs’ throat to make up Will’s lips, chapped and shaking and parted on his screams.

 

Her death is the catalyst, the seed, or perhaps it’s Hannibal’s anguish, painted in a gutted red smile he carves on Will Graham’s stomach to mark his betrayal for the world to see.

 

He washes the paint from his hands, corrosive and crippling, but Will Graham is under his skin, nestled in the space adjacent to his heart, poisoning it from the inside out, molding him, _changing_ him.

 

There is a beauty in anguish. Hannibal’s shroud threatens to pull him under, weighted down by the blood on his hands, wrapped thick around his neck. He runs, he lives, he breathes, he kills, but nothing fills him the way the speck of Will Graham left inside does.

 

He battles with forgiveness, the reality a cold knife to his heart, stabbed through and dragging him down until it releases suddenly. Hannibal doesn’t have to look to know who’s holding the blade. Will is alive inside, and he is alive in front of Hannibal, and the brush dangles above their heads, suspended in time in front of the _Primavera_.

 

Then, slowly, it lowers itself into Will Graham’s outstretched hand and Hannibal knows he is lost.

**Author's Note:**

> I have not written anything in years, but I just finished watching Hannibal and... this just happened.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
